Tuesday, August 21, 2007

To come up with its 2004 figure, lead author Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and fellow researchers sent Iraqis to interview 998 families in 33 neighborhoods across the country. They asked how many people in each household had died and of what, then extrapolated to Iraq as a whole. Thence the 100,000 figure, which they insisted was “conservative.”

BUT CONSIDER JUST THIS: Because the sample size was so small, the range for deaths was wider than Rosie O’Donnell’s rump: 8,000 to 194,000. So the Lancet researchers merely split the difference. They said the tiny sample size was necessary because the interviewers were in constant danger — assuredly from being caught in the crosshairs of an F-15 Strike Eagle.

"As he gazed around him the youth felt a flash of astonishment at the blue, pure sky and the sun gleaming on the trees and fields. It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment."